Down, But Not Out
by Victoria LeRoux
Summary: In which Clint takes a leap, but not one of faith, Tony saves the day with a little help from Clint, they fight mud-monsters which may or may not be golems, and the weather absolutely sucks. Whump and mayhem, as usual. No spoilers.


Please bear in mind that I haven't seen the movie yet – my apologies for any discrepancies between the fic and the movie.  
Character: Tone Tone, Clintikins, some Stove  
Summary: In which Clint takes a leap, but not one of faith, Tony saves the day (with a little help from Clint), they fight mud-monsters, and the weather absolutely sucks.  
Whump: Tone Tone, Clintikins, some Stove  
As always, thanks to the fantastic group of insane individuals that comprise the Beta Branch. We're always open for new recruits, minions, and members, so give us a peek. I haven't seen the movie yet, as I said, so please don't leave spoilers on your way out. :)

* * *

It was a dark and stormy night.

Clint grinned to himself as the thought came to him. He shouldn't have been surprised when it started storming, really he shouldn't have. He might not have watched the weather report and there might have been no clouds in the sky, but it really wasn't that shocking that the one day they needed Mr. God of Lightning to zap some monsters out of the sky, he couldn't do it without possibly electrocuting them all.

So, yeah, the whole cliché 'dark and stormy night' thing wasn't a shocker.

Clint crept forward, bow in his hands and wishing that he had a gun instead. It wasn't often that he would be willing to trade his trusty bow for a far less reliable weapon, but today was just one of those days.

A strong gust of wind blew out and he readjusted his shot slightly. Small eddies and gusts were blowing in every possible direction, and it was almost impossible to predict when and where they would blow. If he took the shot now, it was just as likely the arrow would be sent back into his face as it was it would get within fifteen feet of his target.

The archer sighed, placing his bow back onto his back and creeping closer to the edge. The footing was precarious and slippery on the roof, but it scarcely affected his sure-footed gait.

The weather had gotten worse in the past few minutes, something Clint wouldn't have deemed possible. It was like New York had just been entitled to its very own personal hurricane. The wind was getting stronger, threatening to blow him off his feet, and the pouring rain was stinging his skin. It was impossible to see through the thickening stream of water, despite the fact Clint's sunglasses shaded his eyes from the fierce downpour fairly well.

"Barton… in?"

Oh, yeah, another helpful aspect of the storm. It was interfering with the comms. and he only got words in snatches.

"Loud, but not clear," he responded, grasping the side of the roof in one hand as he tried to lean down to see how the battle was going. He was probably going to have to climb down and get involved in some mano-to-mano. He would have already, but the door to the stairs was locked and he didn't fancy climbing down the side of the building in the middle of a Hurricane Andrew re-enactment. Next time he wasn't going to let Tony drop him off on the first rooftop that looked like it was going to work as a suitable spot for him to provide backup from.

"What the hell are you doing?" Tony's voice was remarkably clear – he'd probably had Jarvis override Clint's brain signals or something. It wouldn't surprise Clint if the freaky AI was capable of things like that.

"Trying to get into a better position," Clint replied, just as one of the gutters overhead came loose and nearly smacked him in the face. He jumped backward, nearly falling off the building in the process, and received a stream of dirty water in the face of his trouble. Wonderful. Now he'd probably get pneumonia or something similar. "And what happened to Steve's mike?"

"I'm having Jarvis boost the signals around me," Tony replied. Okay, so Clint's guess was close. "It's not going to help you two hear each other, but I can relay instructions."

Clint shook the water out of his hair and wished he got to have a nifty helmet like Steve and Tony. He was probably going to have to spend an hour trying to scrub the mud out of his hair.

At least he wasn't like Natasha. It was probably a good thing only the four of them had needed to come out. Natasha was never fun to deal with when she had to spend time combing mud, dirt, and blood out of her hair.

"What happened to Thor?" Clint asked, squinting his eyes as he tried to ignore the fact that a large cockroach was crawling over his shirt. A rat skittered by him and he winced. Even the wildlife was nervous.

The cockroach touched his neck and Clint brushed it off with a shiver. He still had flashbacks to the time he, Natasha, Tony, and Thor had been in captivity, and Clint had been forced to –

He shook off the thoughts with a grimace. _Not now._

He was tired of this rooftop.

"Boy Scout sent him back to HQ. He was getting pissed off."

"Which one was getting pissed?" Clint asked, cautiously allowing one foot to swing down over the roof before letting the other leg dangle off the edge as well. He didn't even bother trying to avoid sitting down in a puddle – he was already soaked to the skin.

"Both of them. Thor electrocuted the Cap, and Steve almost smacked him in the face with his Frisbee. Then they both yelled at me," Tony's voice turned slightly sulky, and Clint snorted.

"You need me down there?" he asked. He couldn't even tell if they were done fighting, but he didn't see the need to rush if Tony was able to have a casual conversation with him.

"Not really, aerial support works. If you could take out the guy trying to sneak up on Cap, that would help even the odds a little."

Clint squinted down, trying to pick out the distinctive uniform Steve liked to wear. It was hopeless – he could barely pick out the occasional flash of the Iron Man's flares. With the team's luck, he'd probably just hit Steve by accident if he fired without aiming.

"Hey, how're your catching skills in that tin can?" Clint asked curiously, adjusting his position slightly so that he was able to crouch on his heels and make sure his bow was securely fastened on his back. There was nothing he could do about his quiver – none of his explosives were left, so any that fell free wouldn't wreck _too_much damage, unless they hit someone important.

There was a long, quiet pause.

"Excuse me?" Clint had to hand it to Tony – the man really knew how to pack more disbelief, sarcasm, and incredulity into two words than most people could manage in a lifetime. The archer frowned as he caught a hint of pain in Tony's voice.

"Catching skills. As in, catching people-shaped objects before they go splat on the cement." Clint grinned as he rolled his shoulders, trying to relax the tension in his body.

There was an explosion below, and the distinct sound of Tony cursing.

"Everyone okay?" the archer asked, rocking slightly.

"Shit. Shit. Steve isn't getting up. Why aren't you shooting anyone?"

"_Because I can't see,_" Clint growled, then said, "I'm coming down. You better be ready to catch me."

"You're not thinking about-"

"I'm not thinking about anything, that's the problem. I'm useless up here, get ready," Clint said, then jumped.

* * *

Tony yelped as he kicked off the ground and fired a blast point-blank into the face of the golem closest to him. The creature made a wet, sucking noise as the mud making up its body was forcibly separated and Tony lunged forward to put his hand in its mouth and yank out the piece of paper keeping it mobile.

He managed to get it free, but the creature's mouth snapped shut around his arm.

Tony let out a strangled, pained noise as he tried to kick it free. Frantically he yanked and pulled at it until his armor began to slide free.

"Ow. Ow. _Fucking_piece of shit-" Tony let out another blast and his hand came free.

Gingerly he tried to move his arm and found to his dismay that the limb pulsated with a fiery blast of agony when he tried to twitch it.

Definitely fractured, at the very least.

Right. He was talking to Clint and the moron had just asked him something stupid. "Excuse me?" he asked, trying to keep his voice as pain-free as possible. It was hard, but his voice squeaked a little at the end.

"Catching skills. As in, catching people-shaped objects before they go splat on the cement."

Great. Clint had subscribed to the crazy-train theory. If Tony had any luck at all, this was all purely hypothetical because the archer was in one of his rare, chatty moods.

Tony ducked as something flew over his head, smacked into the building behind him, and exploded with a large blast. A chunk of the building flew by, and Tony recalled with a sinking feeling that Sir Hurt-a-lot had been standing somewhere behind him.

"Shit," he said faintly, whirling around as his eyes sought out Steve and he fired off a blast from his good arm. There – a flash of red and blue caught his attention and Tony winced when he saw a large concrete slab over Steve's leg and the man unmoving on the ground.

"Everyone okay?" Clint again. Tony wondered why the guy didn't just take a look for himself. He had _eyes_didn't he?

"Shit. Shit. Steve isn't getting up. Why aren't you shooting anyone?" Tony demanded, starting to move forward to his teammate, shooting off a blast when something got in his way.

"_Because I can't see,_" the archer snapped in reply, sounding a little embarrassed. Tony blinked – he'd forgotten the rain would obscure Clint's gaze. He'd need to make him some sort of visor to help with bad visibility in the future. "I'm coming down. You better be ready to catch me."

Oh, great. God save Tony from meatheads and overly helpful teammates. "You're not thinking about-"

"I'm not thinking about anything, that's the problem. I'm useless up here, get ready," Clint replied, a hint of amusement in his voice.

Tony snapped his gaze up, letting his automatic targeting take over as he tried to find the speck that would be a falling Clint in the sky. "Jarvis, find Barton."

The screen illuminated, locking in on a figure currently free falling in the air.

Tony reached down to snatch up Steve – it wouldn't do to let the man get captured or killed when he was off saving Barton – and kicked the concrete slab off the man. Steve secure under one arm, Tony kicked off into the air, zooming toward his teammate.

He caught Clint easily, and nearly dropped him again as the pain from his arm spiked up. His eyes instantly began to water and his arm shook frantically.

Shit. He'd forgotten about that.

"Boosters off," he said, and winced when they clicked off instantly. The ground rushed up to meet him. Shit. He was going to drop someone when they landed. He just had to get them close enough that it wouldn't kill whoever he dropped..

About ten feet from the ground, he barked, "Boosters on. On! On! On!"

They clicked on, and Tony's body jerked at the sudden cancellation of gravity's pull. Steve remained easily in his grasp, but when Clint's body jerked against his injured arm, Tony dropped him by reflex.

The archer hit the ground and Tony gave in to the swears he'd been holding in since it had started raining.

Clint gave a yelp of pain as he hit the ground, and it took too long for the archer to start moving again. Tony stood over his teammates, firing off blast after blast as he attempted to keep them sheltered from the three golems still advancing on them.

The golem's controllers lay dead or unconscious, but the final orders must have still kept them moving toward the team. Tony didn't doubt that they had been ordered to kill them at all costs – they were great at pissing off powerful supervillains.

If there was one good thing about the golems, it was that they moved slowly.

That was about the only good thing.

Tony managed to fire off four blasts, but it scarcely slowed them. If Tony had to guess, he'd say the rain was going more damage to them than he was.

"This sucks," he gasped out as one huge fist smacked into his ribs and sent him flying into a building. His head cracked against his helmet, and he must have blanked out of a few minutes, because when he came to, one of the golems was swinging Steve around like a ragdoll.

Tony raised his injured, fractured – he wasn't going to accept the possibility that it was broken – arm into the air and fired off a blast straight at the thing's arm.

It dropped the groaning Steve and began to follow its friend in Tony's direction.

"This sucks," he repeated weakly, his head lolling to one side as he tried to tell his body to get up. It didn't, which wasn't a surprise at all. Everything freaking hurt and his thoughts were starting to seem disjointed and sporadic.

The first golem was almost on him, its companion just a few feet behind.

"You know, I thought golems were supposed to be vulnerable to water," Tony said with a cough. Something wet and sticky came out when he started coughing, and then he couldn't stop.

God, his ribs hurt too. Breathing was starting to seem like too much trouble.

"Hey! Squishy!" a voice yelled and the lead golem stopped moving. Its follower crashed into it, and it took a few minutes for the two to right themselves so they could stare at the man who had caught their attention.

It was Clint, of course, who was standing up and looking extremely pissed.

Oh good. That meant Tony could pass out now.

* * *

It seemed almost everything Clint had done today was one gigantic mistake after another. He should probably take the world's biggest idiot award away from Tony, the current three-time champion.

It started when he agreed to this mission. It had been obvious he wasn't going to be much use from the very beginning. Six golems he _still_didn't know how to fight, an airplane of enemies, and six controllers on the ground. Definitely nothing suited to his skill set. He was an archer, not someone who blew things up.

Nevertheless, they'd wanted backup "just in case", and like a moron, he'd agreed because he was tired of playing Tetris alone in HQ.

So he'd given up on beating Tony's high score, because it was obvious Stark had cheated anyway, and came along. Then he hadn't protested when Tony dropped him off on top of a building that looked like it would be a good spot to play sniper from.

He'd remained silent when it started raining and waited until he couldn't see to start plotting how to get to ground level.

Of course, there was that whole 'jumping off a building' idea too.

Definitely not one of his better days.

Clint winced as he tried to raise his head off the ground. It felt like something was digging into his back – right, his bow was there – and fuck, his face hurt.

There was the sound of a couple blasts, and he raised his head just in time to see Tony go flying.

That wasn't good.

The sharpshooter tried to get his feet under him and stand, but when that didn't work, resorted to crawling to where he could see one of the golem's controllers lying on the ground. The man had to have some type of weapon because they'd thought it smart to attack the Avengers, and not even the stupidest crook would attack them weaponless.

Clint barely reached him before he collapsed flat on the ground. It took too long to begin to scavenge through the guy's belongings, then he saw the shotgun on the ground.

Okay, he could definitely go for a Winchester right now.

Clint grabbed the gun, opened it to make sure it was loaded, and dragged himself to his feet. He had one shot – quite literally in this case – and he had to make it count.

He snapped the gun closed, clicked the safety off, and then his body forcibly reminded him how much it hurt to move.

Squinting his eyes as he tried to blink away the automatic tears, Clint raised the gun. Shit. Something was wrong with his back – moving caused pain to howl up and down along his spine.

He mentally cursed Tony for dropping him, before deciding that was unfair and he began to curse himself for getting into this mess.

"Hey! Squishy!" he yelled, trying to draw himself up straight to look like more of a threat. It worked, sort of. The thing took a while to turn around, then Clint found himself staring into the eyes of three angry-looking mud creatures.

Crap. He hadn't worked out what to do once he got them off Tony. It wasn't like anyone had told him how to get rid of these things.

"Pick on someone your own size!" he yelled. Wait, that wouldn't work. Steve was bigger than he was. "Um. I mean, come and get me?"

They were obviously not very smart, or maybe they just figured Tony was screwed anyway and could wait a few minutes to be pulverized, because they began to converge upon Clint. The three of them moved ridiculously slowly so Clint had time to aim the gun and line up his shot.

The first one was getting too close for comfort when he fired at its legs. The pellets sank into the mud and, puzzled, the creature slowed.

That was good enough for him. Clint yelled as loudly as he could and threw the gun at the thing's face before darting forward and letting his yell become a scream of pain as he threw himself at it. Quickly he scaled its back and grabbed onto the head, holding on as it thrashed about.

Scratch everything off his earlier list - _this_was the stupidest thing he'd done to date.

The other two creatures reached him and began to pummel the one Clint was on, trying to get to him.

Clint held on for dear life as the three golems wrestled with one another, their movements becoming jerkier as time progressed. His grip began to slip in the mud after a solid blow landed on his back, and he howled with pain as he slid off and fell back onto the flooding streets.

He crashed onto his back again and his vision went white for a moment. He let himself lie limply on the ground, wondering what the fuck was wrong with his back.

One of the golems crashed to the ground and went still, its former comrade holding something paper-like in its fist.

Well, that was good. One down, two left to kill him. Maybe Tony would stand some sort of chance after all.

Then the second one fell on top of him, his breath left him in a rush, and he really passed out this time.

* * *

Try as he might, Tony couldn't pass out.

Maybe it was some sense of duty to Clint because he'd dropped the idiot, or maybe it was just some foreboding sense that Tony would need to save the day yet again.

It was probably a bit of both.

Tony gulped when the archer started getting flung around on the golem's back, but he was too tired to stand. His head flopped to one side as he watched the golem Clint was piggybacking whirl in a circle. Tony nearly threw up when he realized the reason the archer looked so pale was because his bow was buried in his freaking back.

It must have happened when his friend fell. Tony felt a pang of guilt, but pushed it away. Clint didn't look like he could hold on much longer and when the archer tumbled off, Tony would need to be ready for whatever hellish plan came to mind.

Clint got spun around again, and then one of the golems crashed a fist into the archer's back. The bow moved, the weapon sliding deeper into Clint's back.

The archer's face went chalk white and he fell, crashing into the cement.

He didn't get up, not even when the golem he had been perched on crashed to the ground beside him. The other two golems continued to hit each other, probably confused by Clint's trickery, until one of them went down.

Tony grinned, then one of them crashed onto Clint.

That wasn't good at all.

The Iron Man narrowed his eyes. Fuck reason, they weren't going to get out of here alive if he didn't do something drastic.

"Redirect all system power to left arm flares. Override fail safes," he ordered, raising the arm. "Target on all moving enemies."

The targeting system locked in and Tony felt his chest constrict slightly as most of the power was directed to the growing blast in his left arm. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus.

"Sir, vitals are dropping to cri-"

"Shut up," Tony ordered. With any luck, help would be here soon for his team.

With a pained wince, he let the power blast off and dazedly watched it smash into the golem.

It washed over the creature and didn't even leave a scratch on it as small fires appeared on it. The rain quickly put them out, and Tony gasped for breath as it began to move toward him.

Shit. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't freaking breathe.

He was just beginning to pass out when he saw the creature explode in a mess of mud and whatever else kept it alive and animated.

Someone was speaking to him, but he couldn't identify the voice. "Hang on," the voice ordered. "Stay awake…"

He gave into exhaustion and pain.

* * *

Clint awoke in the infirmary, feeling blissfully free of worry as he cracked open an eyelid.

Cautiously he rolled his head to one side, the movement made difficult by the fact he was lying on his stomach, and blinked as he saw a sleeping Natasha unconscious in a chair by his bedside. A small grin tugged at his mouth as he took in her features, but it faded slightly as the events that left him in here came to mind. _Tony and Steve…_

"That smile better be for me, considering I saved your ass," the grumpy whisper caught Clint's attention and he turned his head to look past Natasha so he could see Tony mock scowling at him. The man's head was covered in bandages and he was shirtless, letting Clint see the gauze around Tony's ribs. The Iron Man also had a cast on his right arm – it was a bright, neon pink, probably courtesy of one of Tony's many one-night stands among the nurses.

"I recall it being the other way around," he croaked. "Who was it that piggy-backed a mud-monster?"

"It was a golem," Tony snapped, then lowered his voice when Natasha shifted in her sleep and the knife in her hands became apparent. "And _I_saved you from having to be scraped off the ground in pieces."

"I recall you dropping me," Clint teased, then noticed Tony's face fall.

"Yeah, I did. S-" Clint cleared his throat, interrupting Tony's apology. Tony was probably dosed up on pain medication if he was trying to apologize for something.

"Nah, you did good. Thanks," he told Tony.

The guilt vanished in Tony's eyes and Clint tried to resist rolling his eyes when he heard Tony's reply. "Yeah, I did. Next time, it's your turn to go into cardiac arrest."

This time it was Clint's turn to feel guilty. "_What?_"

"After your little last stand trick, I used up most of my power to try to zap the golem about to smush you into the ground. Luckily Steve was awake to save both our asses."

"Huh?"

"Guy woke up when he got thrown to the ground for… the third time, I think. Evidently, him collapsing was enough to send out some type of emergency signal to HQ, and they were almost there when we were getting our asses kicked. Steve grabbed a grenade, stuffed it in the thing's mouth, and _boom,_no more annoying golem," Tony laughed and sat back, waving his cast in the air with a wince. "Did you know Fury's giving us hazard pay for this? Said he felt so bad for the two of us that we deserved reimbursement."

"Really?" Thinking was hard work - Clint felt like he'd been reduced to monotone, one word sentences as he tried to keep up with Tony's rapid babbling.

"Well, not in so many words. He told us that he was going to pay us to not create this type of paperwork for him again, so I was paraphrasing a bit," Tony replied offhandedly. _That _sounded more like Fury.

""What's the diagnosis?" Clint asked.

"For me? Broke my arm in _four_ places, internal bleeding, concussion, broken ribs, punctured lung, and cardiac arrest. I'm going to have to build another arc reactor, too. I went a little overboard with the explosions so Steve stuck one of my old shitty ones in my chest. They also left a hole in my head!" Tony pointed to his head with a sulky expression. "What if they cut something out that's important? _Barbarians._"

"Uh-huh." Clint made a noncommittal grunt as he let himself sink back into the covers. He wasn't going to be able to sleep without getting dosed up – they'd stuck him on his stomach, and he _hated _sleeping that way. It made him feel too vulnerable. Maybe that's why Natasha was here – she was well aware of his hatred.

Tony was still talking, and his words caught Clint's attention. "-bow got stuck in your back when I dropped you. They had to give you surgery for like, five hours, trying to patch the big hole you left in yourself. You also had some other shit wrong with you. Tore some tendons in your wrist, but they fixed that up pretty easily. I think they took out your appendix. They also did some sort of surgery on your spine, and kept bitching about the fact that you wouldn't wake up. You're not paralyzed, are you? Because that would really suck."

Clint's guess about not being able to sleep was wrong – he could feel himself lulled back into sleep as Tony continued to ramble.

He dropped back into unconsciousness, unaware of the smile on Tony's face as he did so.

* * *

Both Clint and Tony had been kicked out of the infirmary after they'd made Banner Hulk out.

It wasn't their fault, for once. Tony had been playing with the machine that monitored Clint's vitals when he'd lapsed out again. To be honest, he still wasn't exactly sure what happened – one moment he was talking to Clint about basketball, and the next he found himself on the ground, accidentally pulling Clint's wires and IV free in one go.

Banner had woken from the nap near Tony's bed, heard the monitors wailing, and panicked.

They'd been quietly relocated back into the room built to contain the Hulk where everyone could keep a safe eye on them.

Getting better was a slow and frustrating process. Clint still wasn't supposed to walk, lie on his back, or pee by himself. Tony wasn't supposed to be unsupervised in case he blanked out again, collapsed, or his new, not quite perfect, arc reactor failed on him.

Post-concussion syndrome sucked.

It had all been carefully explained to Tony – probably no long-term effects would hang around after he got over the PCS. Until then, he'd still occasionally have times where he forgot random snippets of things and his short-term memory would remain blown to hell. Needless to say, he wasn't happy and it completely sucked.

He'd find himself sitting at the desk, no idea how he got there and a computer screen with calculations running in front of him. Sometimes he'd get bursts of headaches and wake up with Steve standing over him, looking concerned. One time he'd forgotten he had agreed to a checkup and went postal on a nurse when he'd seen her standing over him with a needle.

It was embarrassing, but he was beginning to adapt. The stretches between each lapse were getting longer and longer, and he was slowly getting better at not freaking out when he found himself somewhere completely random.

Clint was also a cranky patient – all he'd done the past few weeks was bitch and play Tetris in an effort to beat Tony's high score. The genius didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't possible – he'd hacked into Clint's phone on a whim and put an unachievable score up there just to piss him off.

Natasha had dropped by, mostly just to talk to Clint. Tony wondered about the pair sometimes. They'd often break off in conversation when he approached, and once he'd overheard a snippet of banter that made him wonder if more wasn't going on than met the eye.

Whatever. It didn't matter anyway. He could always ask Jarvis to record their conversations if he thought it was that interesting.

Steve was acting weird around the pair of them. Tony had a feeling he felt guilty for getting knocked out and letting things go to hell. Thor was also sulky – it seemed as though he hated that he had to leave them to ask for backup after he forget for the second time that water conducted electricity and became more hazard than help.

Banner was the only one acting normal. That is to say, he was never around and spent most of his time holed up in his lab. When he came down to visit them, he wouldn't Hulk out despite Tony's best efforts.

Nevertheless, things were slowly going back to normal. They were healing, resting, and recovering. Tony's arm was getting better, and soon he'd be able to start PT on it. Clint spent half his time bitching about being stuck in bed and half his time admiring the plans Tony had come up with for his new bow. Natasha had kicked Steve's ass in practice the other day and Tony had managed to get playbacks of it.

He'd sent it to everyone in SHEILD and Fury had even bitched at him about it.

Yes, things were slowly getting back to normal and the way they were meant to be.

* * *

Please review? *V puppy eyes*


End file.
